Post-Tour PTSD and Wicklow Way plans
Rowman, this may be my very last podcast. Let me explain. Cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Roman, welcome back to another Oil Monks Serre Tour de France podcast. The Tour de France is gone. The Tour de France is buried and I have myself a good old fashioned case of PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder. I find that when I race a stage race and the day after the stage race, it seems like the volume on the rest of your life is torn down. You're used to be in a bunch with car horns going, people screaming all day on your left, on your left moving up and then Swan Eure's carrying your bags. I've kind of often found myself at the end of the stairs just with a bottle in the air waiting for my girlfriend to bring me like a fresh bottle or for someone to carry my bags up the stairs really missing the Swan Eure. I'm having a different type of PTSD as a viewer. I just used to coming home from trying and I always haven't to sort of France to chill out on what I'm having my lunch and go, okay, let's pick this apart because of the podcast they will later on. And last no more, but the Olympics countdown is on and I will definitely do an Olympic podcast and review that. Although latest they've seen the Olympics is still up in the air that they're deciding as they go day by day because COVID cases are so high. But there we go. Today, I want to talk about why this could potentially be my last podcast and yeah, that just a little bit of tongue in cheek. It almost certainly won't be my last podcast, but I am embarking on my first overnight bike packing trip. 130 kilometre trails for the Wycliffe Mountains called the Wycliffe Way and there's north of 3200 metres of climbing. It's a seven-day hike and the plan is to try and do it over two days on the bike. Now the problem that I feel we're going to encounter is a lot of hike a bike, walk and with the bike and that is going to be extremely energy sappen if that's the case. There's long parts that just aren't suitable for gravel bikes that are mountain bikes at best but even at that I feel like you'd be pushing a lot of time but when you add on the amount of kit that we have to bring to stay overnight and I go to the kit and what I'm bringing in the minute it's going to make the bikes very hard to carry and cumbersome slow to carry on these walkin sections. So I am a little bit worried that we'll be get done in two days and we only have enough food and supplies for two days so I asked to get done in two days. That's the long and short of it. It's gone through some of the most beautiful countryside that Ireland has and if you get a chance to come over here I'll speak to the suitability of this week away as a gravel route on Friday when I get back but it's gone through like Google somebody's places, Glenmalloch, Glenmallore, Roundwood, Jouse, Powerscourt, Waterfall, it's spectacular. So I'm going to start in Merley Park and then finish down in Carlo. So the plan tomorrow is to ride at least 70 kilometers of tomorrow and then leave us 50 for the second day and get picked up at the far end because obviously we'd be, you know, we're a hundred and twenty kilometers away. So that's the plan. There's some huts along the way. We haven't quite figured out where we're going to camp along the way. We're massively underprepared for this trip. I'm not going to lie. What I've been noticing is that this bike pack, and this is my forest overnight bike packing trip, and it's a constant battle between bringing stuff that's comfortable or stuff that's light. I don't know if I'm striking that balance well enough. I'll tell you tomorrow when I'm carrying bikes up some of these long climbs trying to carry it on my back with a massive saddle bag, a handlebar bag and a frame bag.
Packing gear and dehydrated meals
I'll probably say I've got the balance completely wrong but I tried to go like I got a tent and I splashed out heavy enough on the tent it was nearly 400 euro for a tent I went with a big Agnes and it's like a backpacking specific tent that's super light I think it's less than two kilograms for the tent went with a super small packable sleep and bag went with a stove, just a gas burner and a small little pot. Look I've already put two paste on my two brush because I didn't want to save the, I didn't want to have the extra way to carry in a tube of two paste. That's how dialed in I am for this. Where I definitely forgot some massive stuff and I won't notice until I get on the trails tomorrow. Food and I've got myself some of this dehydrated, it looks like actual horseshit and I was afraid to open the pack because it probably smells worse. The sell boy date is like 40 years from now on this stuff. Like bacteria would need this, it looks so bad. I've got myself a chicken curry which will have no chicken or curry in it. So I'm not sure how they can label a chicken curry for tomorrow night. So what you do is you boil up some water on the stove, pour it into this bag, let it set for like five minutes and it cooks inside the bag and then you eat it from the bag with a fork that's actually a spoon, it's actually a knife, a spork. I thought that was only a fake thing from the Simpsons but it turns out it's real and then I've got some oats for the following morning, same boil on the bag issue. Not too worried on that front and there's a few pubs scattered along the route where, because it's a seven day hiking trail, it's anticipated that people finish day one and they have somewhere to stay so there's typically pubs and stuff located around there. So I'm thinking if we can blast through at least days one to four in day one, hiking days one to four in day one, stop there for the noise, but maybe a day two point stop and get a big pub lunch or something like that, if it's possible. That's kind of the rough plan. I'm going with it at the moment. The bike packing stuff is amazing. If you haven't used these bike packing specific bags before, they're absolutely phenomenal. I've won on the handlebars and watched a couple of videos. Lauren's 10 Nams, a good man for the bike pack and got a couple of tips there. Lauren's who I had on the podcast. So you get the bulky but light stuff into your handlebar bag. So I've thrown in like an inflatable pillow and my tent into the handlebar bag. The heavy stuff that's dead weight in the frame bag. So I've gone with food and tools and spares in the frame bag. and then the bag behind the saddle kind of rocks around the bit. So I put my clothes in there for that night, put my stove in there, put my sleeping bag in there, and then just for a little touch of class, I've used a carabiner hook to attach a mug to the outside of the bag, just cause I've always had this. I learned banjo when I was like 17 or 18, and looking back, trying to learn banjo was just an attempt to be a little bit windswept and interesting. And I feel I've concluded this journey become windswept and interesting with having me to hook a mug to the outside of my back. I feel like a fucking cowboy heading into the wild west. I'm gonna look like some sack of shite riding across Dublin City Centre tomorrow because the Wiclow Way starts in South Dublin and I'm in North Dublin so I'm literally gonna be in the commuting traffic across the city tomorrow with my mug attached to the back of my thing full of bikepacking kit, no, I'll see some buddies who are on their way into work and they will think this lad has finally cracked. So although I'm not going to be here tomorrow folks, I have my interview podcaster always pre-recorded so I have an amazing interview with Sami Samori and she is one of the, she's just one of the coolest people, if you go on her Instagram, she's just so cool, she's the coolest tattoos, she looks so cool on a bike and because of that, Rafav pulled her and she's been on all these dared-about adventures with Lachlan Martin and Gus Martin across the US and she's gone off her own adventures.
Vlogging the trip and sign-off
She lives in Jerona, she's worked for Camus and they'll sum to her but she's just, there's a picture on there and it's the coolest picture you've ever seen of a cyclist. It's horror with her cool tattoos, she has a trailer which is telling her surfboard, a gravel bike, telling a surfboard down to the beach for a camping trip. She's the coolest person ever and it's an amazing chat with her. So that one's coming tomorrow and I'm going to be back to you on Friday and hopefully I will have survived the Wicklow way. You'll be happy to know or you may not be happy to know but if you're a fan you'll be happy to know. I'm bringing the camera with me and I'm actually going to vlog it so I'm going to bring the Wicklow way to you in video form because the podcast just won't do justice to it. So I'll obviously come back and I'll explain exactly what happened on Friday and then it'll probably take me a few days editing to get the vlog together but it should be a bit of fun and it captures some good moments along the way and hopefully a camp for that doesn't get out of control and burn the whole Wicklow mountains down on tomorrow night. But yeah I'm looking forward to it. I'm equal amounts, exoises and nervous. Roadmen, just a quick heads up. I will have a good chunk of the Wicklow way. I'll be sticking around on my Instagram story so that's roadman.soiklin over on Instagram and if you haven't checked check it out over there. We started doing Instagram Reels, Sarah's doing Instagram Reels now and they're just, they're so funny. They're brilliant. They're all, she's only what I think six, seven days into doing Instagram Reels and they've just taken off some of them are getting, you know, 10, 20,000 views straight off the bat, which is sounds quite small in comparison to the podcast, but it's just getting started. So it's well worth checking it out. And obviously please keep continuing to support us if you're supporting us on Patreon. And If you're not, head on over to patreon.com. It's forward slash Anthony underscore watch. And over there, that's how you support the podcast. If you're enjoying it, you can buy me the price of a beer. And that just helps keep the podcast going. It keeps covering the costs and it keeps us moving forward. We're building something amazing road, man. And I've talked about it last year, how I can feel this community coming together. And, you know, this is what's happening there. The podcast has grown and grown and grown. We've hardly missed a day. We're up on episode 300. We have a Saturday group right now every Saturday, which you're welcome to join that. It's Saturday from Klontarff. We leave at 9.30am. Hit me up on Instagram if you want some details on it. Well, there's two roadman groups going every Saturday on a midweek roadman group going. So the community's building, taking on our first full-time staff, starting to inside the next month. So it's all happy days in the roadman land. Hopefully I don't doy roadman. Enjoy the Sami Samori episode tomorrow, and I'm gonna catch you over on Instagram stories. Until then, roadman, ride safe, I'll chat to you soon. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge, it's a challenge called a 14 day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is gonna be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, training plans, regardless of what your level is, There's Masters Beginner Advanced, there's Mail Plans Shopping List and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoitglink.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio. That's roadmansoitglink.com slash 14 day.